New Afghan Air War? Don't Count On It, General Says (Updated)

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New Afghan Air War? Don't Count On It, General Says (Updated)

BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan – Of all the controversial moves Gen. Stanley McChrystal made while he was in charge of the Afghanistan war, the most controversial was the directive that reined in air strikes – even when his troops were in mortal danger. Last week, new commander Gen. David Petraeus revised his predecessor’s much-criticized guidelines.

So how will Petraeus’ revised rules change the air war? The answer, according to one of the generals in charge of it: not much.

"I don’t know if there’s this shocking change," Brig. Gen. Jack Briggs II, commander of the Bagram-based 455th Air Expeditionary Wing, tells Danger Room. As Briggs sees it, there’s more continuity than change between Petraeus’ directive and McChrystal’s. Both documents balance the need to protect NATO troops with the need to keep collateral damage to an absolute minimum.

Both documents say that civilian deaths can turn tactical victories into strategic setbacks. Both documents order troops to make sure no innocents are in the way when the bombs start falling.

"There are some more specifics about execution," Briggs says. According to the *Rolling Stone *article that ended McChrystal's career, unit commanders were adding all kinds of extra restrictions on firepower that the brass never intended. "One of the bold-faced statements right there at the beginning of the tactical directive really is the fact that subordinate commanders are not going to be more restrictive," he says.

But shooting guns or dropping bombs – going "kinetic," in mil-speak – remains the least-favored option. "If it comes to a point where [ground troops] cannot withdraw, if they cannot maneuver themselves out of a situation, that’s when air, and particularly our kinetic air [power], comes in and becomes sort of our choice of last resort," Briggs says.____

And that becomes most necessary as troops get closer to the porous border with the tribal areas of Pakistan. "Along the border is where we have –- I won’t say it’s more kinetic, but it’s where we have more troops in contact," Briggs says, using the military term for forces in a firefight.

In those situations, "our No. 1 job really is to show presence over the battlefield. There are lots of times, when a troops-in-contact situation develops, we show up, we make noise over the battlefield, and the troops-in-contact situation goes away." In other words: Buzz the village before you think about bombing it.

Notice that Briggs, an F-15E Strike Eagle pilot, isn’t talking about a return to the days of offensive bombing runs like in 2008, when NATO air power substituted for a lack of ground troops and infuriated locals. For all the frustration from infantrymen over the restrictions on air support, there’s a durable consensus among commanders that letting the bombs drop promiscuously is the quickest way to alienate Afghans -– and that alienating the Afghans is the quickest way to lose the war.

Briggs is a self-described Wired fan: That's what he was reading as I walked in to his office, though surely for my benefit. He has squadrons of F-15E and F-16 fighter jets under his command, MC-12 spy planes, C-130 cargo planes and more.

His airmen provide everything from combat air support to intelligence support to airlift missions to protection for Bagram – both in the air and on the ground. But Briggs considers providing ground troops with a better picture of the battlefield to be among his top priorities. “We will take the information that the ground force commander’s providing us,” Briggs explained, a mixture of targeting information, civilian positioning information, appropriate firepower choices and ground commander’s intent, known as a 9-Line.

"The air crew takes the 9-Line “and we also apply our three-dimensional airmen’s perspective, because we can see over the next ridge, we might be able to see through that wadi or through the trees that there’s a building or there’s some civilians in that area. We’ll let the ground force commander know that before we go anywhere or do anything.”

It looks, in other words, like the air war in Afghanistan didn’t enter an interregnum under McChrystal. It began a new and enduring phase. "We have a moral imperative to protect civilians’ lives," Briggs said, "and we have a moral imperative to protect the lives of our coalition partners, our Afghan security-force partners, and our American soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines that are on the ground."____

__Update: __According to a U.N. report released today, civilian deaths caused by NATO aerial attacks are down 64 percent from last year. NATO air strikes killed 69 civilians and injured 45 in the first six months of 2010. The U.N. credited McChrystal's "July 2009 Tactical Directive regulating the use of air strikes" for the shift. Conversely, casualties caused by the Taliban and other insurgent groups have skyrocketed – up 53 percent since 2009.